If I neglected my fantasy baseball team and QuizUp as much as I have neglected this blog, my girlfriend would be pretty happy.
Two months of intensive coding courses will do that. I've studied seven languages, but nothing like computer code. As a classmate said three quarters of the way through our eight week course, "It now feels less like Chinese and more like Portuguese." Well said. Total mind fuck, but when you come out of it and start to realize you can start downloading existing knowledge straight to your brain like Neo, watch out.
That program done, it's on to the next. In this case, Queen City Forward's summer startup incubator program. Another eight weeks, another sprint in the larger marathon of life leading up to Pitch Day on August 6th.
We continue to search for our user and our customer, but we're closer. We'll spend a lot of time the next eight weeks on that hunt. In the week ahead we'll canvas the companies that reside in Packard Place and then follow up with the local take-out places that they frequent. Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm and its use of D-Day as a metaphor has helped us visualize the process. While we're not ready to storm Normandy yet, the metaphor is apt and provides a clearer path forward.
The product continues to evolve as we continue to talk to people and feel out demand and interest. We've drawn up a series of wire-framed screens that we presented yesterday at a local farmers' market to solicit feedback from strangers which lead to a number of good referrals.
It isn't Kung Fu yet, but it's progress.
